“Brazil and Argentina preparing Latin American currency to 'reduce reliance on US dollar' ”, January 24, 2023, Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy Report, Youtube Video duration 35:20, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mudBO1iffOo >
“Brazil and Argentina preparing new Latin American currency to ‘reduce reliance on US dollar’: Brazil and Argentina are making plans for a Latin American currency called the Sur, to ‘boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar’. Lula had pledged it while running for president”, Jan 22, 2023, Ben Norton, Text Article, Geopolitical Economy, at <https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/22/brazil-argentina-latin-american-currency-dollar/>
“BRICS challenges US dollar, Saudi considers selling oil in other currencies: Financial multipolarity”, January 21, 2023, Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy Report, Youtube Video duration 35:13, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryKuoB9JEBE&t=2s >
“BRICS challenges US dollar, Saudi considers selling oil in other currencies: New multipolar economic order: BRICS is ‘developing a fairer system of monetary exchange’ to challenge the ‘dominance of the dollar’, South Africa revealed. Saudi Arabia is considering selling oil in other currencies”. Economist Zoltan Pozsar says the US “unipolar era” is over. January 21, 2023, Ben Norton, Text Article, Geopolitical Economy, at <https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/21/brics-us-dollar-saudi-oil-currency-multipolar/>.
“Great power conflict puts the dollar’s exorbitant privilege under threat: The monetary order is already being challenged by de-dollarisation efforts and central bank digital currencies”, January 20, 2023, Zoltan Pozsar, The Financial Times, at <https://www-ft-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/content/3e05b491-d781-4865-b0f7-777bc95ebf71>
“Brazil and Argentina to start preparations for a common currency”, Michael Stott and Lucinda Elliott in Buenos Aires, January 24, 2023, The Financial TImes, at < https://archive.is/mlXhj#selection-2149.88-2149.94 >
Introduction by dmorista:
These 2 major articles and 2 closely related youtube video presentations by Ben Norton that point out yet more evidence of the decline of U.S. Socioeconomic, Political, and Military Power and the rise of the formerly Third World nations led by the incredible power of China. Now even the American Backyard, in Latin America is showing more and more signs of breaking free of U.S. domination. Norton has long discussed these issues with Michael Hudson the Leftist economist, and we have seen commentary by Jack Rasmus, Webster Tarpley, Richard Wolff, David Harvey and many others that address the changes in the Global Economic and Political hierarchy. Norton’s Youtube presentations of this material are particularly powerful and nuanced. The accompanying text articles supplement the material on the videos and provide links to the articles that Norton cites. I also posted two Financial Times articles one of which “Brazil and Argentina to start preparations for a common currency” discusses the proposal for a new Latin American Currency independent of the dollar; the other article “Great power conflict puts the dollar’s exorbitant privilege under threat: ….”, discusses the general loss of hegemony by the U.S. dollar and the rise of other alternatives on a global scale.
Norton mentions that he has presented many previous shows that discuss this issue. Readers here who are interested in this issue should look in his show notes and archives for those presentations.
“Brazil and Argentina preparing Latin American currency to 'reduce reliance on US dollar' ”, January 24, 2023, Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy Report, Youtube Video duration 35:20, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mudBO1iffOo >
“Brazil and Argentina preparing new Latin American currency to ‘reduce reliance on US dollar’ ”: Brazil and Argentina are making plans for a Latin American currency called the Sur, to ‘boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar’. Lula had pledged it while running for president”, Jan 22, 2023, Ben Norton, Text Article, Geopolitical Economy, at <https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/22/brazil-argentina-latin-american-currency-dollar/>
(Caption: Brazil's President Lula da Silva with Argentina's Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and President Alberto Fernández)
The governments of Brazil and Argentina are making plans to create a new currency for Latin America, called the Sur (“south” in English), according to a report in the Financial Times.
Other countries in the region will be invited to use the currency.
Their goal is to “boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar”, the newspaper noted, citing government officials.
Argentina’s Economic Minister Sergio Massa told the Financial Times that the South American nations will soon “start studying the parameters needed for a common currency, which includes everything from fiscal issues to the size of the economy and the role of central banks”.
Massa said they are preparing “a study of mechanisms for trade integration”. But he cautioned that it could take years to develop, and this is just “first step on a long road which Latin America must travel”.
Brazil and Argentina will discuss the currency plans at the meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Buenos Aires on January 24.
Brazil has the largest economy in Latin America, and Argentina has the third biggest (after Mexico).
(Link to video with Ben Norton, “Brazil and Argentina preparing new Latin American currency to ‘reduce reliance on US dollar’ ”, Jan 22, 2023, Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy(dot)com, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mudBO1iffOo >)
Argentina-based Spanish economist Alfredo Serrano Manc, who directs a think tank dedicated to regional integration, the Latin American Strategic Center of Geopolitics (CELAG), told the Financial Times that “the path is to find mechanisms which substitute the dependence on the dollar”.
He added that now is the moment, given that “there are many governments that are ideologically similar”, with left-wing leaders across Latin America.
Brazil’s leftist President Lula da Silva returned to power on January 1.
During his electoral campaign, Lula had floated the possibility of creating a regional currency for trade.
At a rally in May 2022, the Workers’ Party leader had said, “We are going to create a currency in Latin America, because we can’t keep depending on the dollar”.
Lula revealed that it would be called the Sur. He added that it would not be based on the euro model, in that countries could maintain their sovereign domestic currency.
Instead, the plan would be to use the Sur for regional trade, Lula said.
After Lula won the October 2022 election, Ecuador’s left-wing politician and economist Andrés Arauz published a blueprint for a “new regional financial architecture” for Latin America.
Arauz said the plan would be to revive regional institutions like the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Banco del Sur (Bank of the South), and to create a Banco Central del Sur (Central Bank of the South) to oversee the new currency.
The goal is “to harmonize the payment systems of” the countries that make up UNASUR in order “to carry out inter-bank transfers to any bank inside of the region in real time and from a cellphone”, he wrote.
Arauz was a presidential candidate who came close to winning Ecuador’s 2021 election. He is also finishing a PhD in economics.
Argentina has suffered with odious debt owed to foreign colonial powers for 200 years.
Today, Argentina is trapped in $44 billion of debt with the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This dollar-denominated foreign debt has led to a constant drain of foreign currency out of Argentina, fueling high levels of inflation.
Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández visited China and Russia in February 2022, seeking alternatives to the US-dominated financial system, and joining Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Argentina has also applied to join the extended BRICS+ bloc, with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Buenos Aires attended the group’s 2022 summits at Beijing’s invitation.
As former president, Lula was himself a co-founder of the BRICS.
Both Brazil and Argentina are already part of a South American trade bloc, known as Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur, or Common Market of the South).
Lula has for years emphasized the importance of economic and political integration of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Immediately after returning to office in January, Lula moved to revive and strengthen regional institutions like CELAC, UNASUR, and Mercosur.
Brazil’s previous far-right President Jair Bolsonaro had sought to sabotage these organizations, withdrawing or suspending the country’s membership and instead aligning the South American giant closely with the United States.
Bolsonaro came to power thanks to two US-backed political coups in Brazil, including a parliamentary putsch against Workers’ Party President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the politically motivated imprisonment of Lula on false charges in the lead-up to the 2018 election.
Soon after entering office, Bolsonaro traveled to Virginia to visit CIA headquarters.
Fearing legal consequences in Brazil for his flagrant corruption and for policies that caused the mass deaths of citizens, Bolsonaro fled to Florida two days before his term ended. He has since been living in the United States as a fugitive from justice.
In this article:Andrés Arauz, Argentina, Brazil, CELAC, dollar, Financial Times, Latin America, Lula da Silva, MERCOSUR, Sergio Massa, Sur, UNASUR
“BRICS challenges US dollar, Saudi considers selling oil in other currencies: Financial multipolarity”, January 21, 2023, Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy Report, Youtube Video duration 35:13, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryKuoB9JEBE&t=2s >
“BRICS challenges US dollar, Saudi considers selling oil in other currencies: New multipolar economic order: BRICS is ‘developing a fairer system of monetary exchange’ to challenge the ‘dominance of the dollar’, South Africa revealed. Saudi Arabia is considering selling oil in other currencies”. Economist Zoltan Pozsar says the US “unipolar era” is over. January 21, 2023, Ben Norton, Text Article, Geopolitical Economy, at <https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/21/brics-us-dollar-saudi-oil-currency-multipolar/>.
{Caption: BRICS summit in 2014 (left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with the Arab League in Saudi Arabia in December 2022 (right) }
The international economic system had been dominated for decades by the United States, but this financial architecture is rapidly fracturing with the creation of new institutions in the Global South.
The BRICS bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa is working “to develop a fairer system of monetary exchange”, to challenge the “dominance of the dollar”, South Africa’s foreign minister has revealed.
Saudi Arabia publicly confirmed that it is considering selling its oil in other currencies.
(Link to watch Ben Norton’s video version of this material)
China’s President Xi Jinping said Beijing will buy energy from the Persian Gulf states in its own currency, the renminbi.
Prominent economist Zoltan Pozsar, of the Swiss investment bank Credit Suisse, has observed that the “unipolar era” of US hegemony is quickly being replaced with a new “multipolar” order of “one world, two systems”.
“China is proactively writing a fresh set of rules” and “creating a new type of globalisation”, Pozsar wrote, describing how this transition threatens “the ‘exorbitant privilege’ that the dollar holds as the international reserve currency”.
A meeting of the heads of state of the BRICS bloc in 2014
BRICS works to ‘develop a fairer system of monetary exchange’ as alternative to ‘dominance of the dollar’
South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor told Russia’s state media outlet Sputnik that the BRICS bloc is working to “develop a fairer system of monetary exchange”, to weaken the “dominance of the dollar”.
Pandor’s comments were ignored by Western media outlets, but widely reported in the Indian press.
“We have always been concerned by the fact that there is a dominance of the dollar and that we do need to look at alternative [systems]”, she said.
“The systems currently in place tend to privilege very wealthy countries and tend to be really a challenge for countries, such as ourselves, which have to make payments in dollars, which costs much more in terms of our various currencies”, Pandor continued.
“So I do think a fairer system has to be developed, and it’s something we’re discussing with the BRICS ministers in the economic sector discussions”, the South African foreign minister added.
In 2014, the BRICS countries created the New Development Bank (NDB) as an alternative to the US-dominated World Bank.
Pandor explained, “Within the economic context we are looking at how the NDB and other institutional formations may assist us to develop a fairer system of monetary exchange”.
The South African foreign minister also criticized the United States’ imposition of unilateral sanctions, which are illegal under international law.
She told Sputnik, “We always have a problem with unilateral sanctions and their impact on many countries that fall outside a particular conflict, so we have indicated to our friends in the United States that we really want them to relook at this imposition of unilateral sanctions, which is often not very helpful a strategy in resolving problems”.
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with the heads of state of the Arab League in Saudi Arabia in December 2022
Saudi Arabia considers selling oil in other currencies
While the BRICS is gradually moving toward de-dollarization, one of Washington’s most important historical allies is doing the same.
The world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, has publicly acknowledged that it is considering selling its crude in other currencies, not just the US dollar.
Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan told Bloomberg TV, “There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in the US dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal”.
“I don’t think we are waving away or ruling out any discussion that will help improve the trade around the world”, he said.
In 1974, Saudi Arabia agreed to sell its crude in the dollar and invest its oil revenue in Treasury securities, in return for US government protection.
This petrodollar system helped undergird the status of the greenback as the global reserve currency, after US President Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar to gold in 1971.
But the petrodollar now has direct challengers.
The Wall Street Journal reported in March 2022 that “Saudi Arabia [was] in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan”. Riyadh did not publicly confirm this at the time.
Chinese President Xi Jinping then visited Riyadh in December, where he held a historic meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the 21 member states of the Arab League.
Xi said he and top officials from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman discussed purchasing Persian Gulf energy with China’s own currency, the renminbi.
The Chinese president explained, in comments reported by Reuters: “China will continue to import large quantities of crude oil from GCC countries, expand imports of liquefied natural gas, strengthen cooperation in upstream oil and gas development, engineering services, storage, transportation and refining, and make full use of the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange as a platform to carry out yuan settlement of oil and gas trade”.
China is already Saudi Arabia’s top trading partner, and Beijing, Riyadh, and the GCC pledged to deepen their multilateral trade.
Prominent Credit Suisse economist describes new multipolar order challenging US dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’
These historic developments in the BRICS and Saudi Arabia are part of an international shift to a multipolar economic order.
Prominent economist Zoltan Pozsar, global head of short-term interest rate strategy at Swiss investment bank Credit Suisse, described this transition in a January 20 op-ed in the Financial Times, titled “Great power conflict puts the dollar’s exorbitant privilege under threat“.
Pozsar, who is something of a celebrity in contemporary economics and has been described as a “superstar” by the financial press, wrote that the “unipolar era” following the end of the first cold war, in which “the US was the undisputed hegemon”, is now coming to an end.
In this increasingly multipolar world, “China is proactively writing a fresh set of rules”, he said, “creating a new type of globalisation through institutions such as the Belt and Road Initiative, the Brics+ group of emerging economies and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation”.
We are seeing a bifurcation of global economic and political institutions, in what “may eventually lead to ‘one world, two systems'”, Pozsar explained, referencing China’s model for Hong Kong of “one country, two systems”.
He wrote that the “dollar-based monetary order is already being challenged in multiple ways”, in particular by “the spread of de-dollarisation efforts and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)”.
“Recently, the pace of de-dollarisation appears to have picked up”, he observed.
Pozsar pointed out:
China and India have been paying for Russian commodities in renminbi, rupees and UAE dirhams. India has launched a rupee settlement mechanism for its international transaction while China asked GCC countries to make full use of the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange for the renminbi settlement of oil and gas trades over the next three to five years. With the expansion of Brics to beyond Brazil, Russia, India and China, the de-dollarisation of trade flows may proliferate.
Major countries like China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia are exporting more than ever, which means they have record current account surpluses, Pozsar noted. But their central banks are not buying US Treasury securities; instead they are investing in gold, commodities, and projects like the Belt and Road Initiative.
“If less trade is invoiced in US dollars and there is a dwindling recycling of dollar surpluses into traditional reserve assets such as Treasuries, the ‘exorbitant privilege’ that the dollar holds as the international reserve currency could be under assault”, the Credit Suisse economist concluded.
In this article:Arab League, BRICS, China, dollar, GCC, Gulf Cooperation Council, multipolarity, oil, petrodollar, renminbi, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Xi Jinping, yuan, Zoltan Pozsar
“Great power conflict puts the dollar’s exorbitant privilege under threat: The monetary order is already being challenged by de-dollarisation efforts and central bank digital currencies”, January 19, 2023, Zoltan Pozsar, The Financial Times, at <https://www-ft-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/content/3e05b491-d781-4865-b0f7-777bc95ebf71>
The writer is the global head of short-term interest rate strategy at Credit Suisse
Since the end of the cold war, the world has largely enjoyed a unipolar era — the US was the undisputed hegemon, globalisation was the economic order and the dollar was the currency of choice. But today, geopolitics once again poses a formidable set of challenges to the existing world order. That means investors have to discount new risks.
China is proactively writing a fresh set of rules as it replays the Great Game, creating a new type of globalisation through institutions such as the Belt and Road Initiative, the Brics+ group of emerging economies and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a collective security alliance of eight countries.
While under lockdown, Beijing forged a special relationship with Moscow and Tehran. This relationship with Russia, with the unwitting assistance of global warming, is helping extend China’s BRI through Arctic shipping lanes. And late last year, we saw the very first summit between China and the Gulf Cooperation Council and hence a deepening of China’s ties with Opec+. All of this may eventually lead to “one world, two systems”.
If we are drifting from a unipolar world to this multipolar one, and if the G20 fractures into the camps of the G7 plus Australia, Brics+ and the non-aligned, it’s impossible that these rifts will not affect the international monetary system. Growing macroeconomic imbalances in the US further add to these risks.
The dollar-based monetary order is already being challenged in multiple ways, but two in particular stand out: the spread of de-dollarisation efforts and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
De-dollarisation is not a new theme. It started with the launch of quantitative easing in the wake of the financial crisis, as current account surplus countries frowned at the idea of negative real returns on their savings. But recently, the pace of de-dollarisation appears to have picked up.
Over the past year, China and India have been paying for Russian commodities in renminbi, rupees and UAE dirhams. India has launched a rupee settlement mechanism for its international transaction while China asked GCC countries to make full use of the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange for the renminbi settlement of oil and gas trades over the next three to five years. With the expansion of Brics to beyond Brazil, Russia, India and China, the de-dollarisation of trade flows may proliferate.
CBDCs could accelerate this transition. China has changed the strategy through which it internationalises the renminbi. Given that financial sanctions are implemented through the balance sheets of western banks, and that these institutions form the backbone of the correspondent banking system that underpins the dollar, using the same network to internationalise the renminbi may have come with risks. To get around this, a new network was needed.
Around the world but particularly in the global east and south, CBDCs are spreading like fast-growing kudzu vines with more than half of the world’s central banks exploring or developing digital currencies with pilots or research, according to the IMF. They will be increasingly interlinked. Central banks interlinked through CBDCs essentially recreate the network of correspondent banks that the US dollar system runs on — instead of correspondent banks, think more of correspondent central banks. The emerging, CBDC-based network — enforced with bilateral currency swap lines — could enable central banks in the global east and south to serve as foreign exchange dealers to intermediate currency flows between local banking systems, all without referencing the dollar or touching the western banking system.
Change is already afoot. The current account surpluses of China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are at a record. Yet these surpluses are largely not being recycled into traditional reserve assets like Treasuries, which offer negative real returns at current inflation rates. Instead we have seen more demand for gold (see China’s recent purchases), commodities (see Saudi Arabia’s planned investments in mining interests) and geopolitical investments such as funding the BRI and helping allies and neighbours in need, like Turkey, Egypt or Pakistan. Leftover surpluses are held increasingly in bank deposits in liquid form to retain much-needed options in a changing world.
In finance, everything is about marginal flows. These matter the most for the largest marginal borrower — the US Treasury. If less trade is invoiced in US dollars and there is a dwindling recycling of dollar surpluses into traditional reserve assets such as Treasuries, the “exorbitant privilege” that the dollar holds as the international reserve currency could be under assault.
Letter in response to this article: Worries over loss of dollar dominance are overdone / From Neil Shearing, Group Chief Economist, Capital Economics, London SW1, UK Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023. All rights reserved. Late
“Brazil and Argentina to start preparations for a common currency”, Michael Stott and Lucinda Elliott in Buenos Aires, January 24, 2023, The Financial TImes, at < https://archive.is/mlXhj#selection-2149.88-2149.94 >
(Caption: Argentine pesos: the new currency would at first run in parallel with the existing currencies © REUTERS)
Brazil and Argentina will this week announce that they are starting preparatory work on a common currency, in a move which could eventually create the world’s second-largest currency bloc.
South America’s two biggest economies will discuss the plan at a summit in Buenos Aires this week and will invite other Latin American nations to join.
The initial focus will be on how a new currency, which Brazil suggests calling the “sur” (south), could boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar, officials told the Financial Times. It would at first run in parallel with the Brazilian real and Argentine peso.
“There will be . . . a decision to start studying the parameters needed for a common currency, which includes everything from fiscal issues to the size of the economy and the role of central banks,” Argentina’s economy minister Sergio Massa told the Financial Times.
“It would be a study of mechanisms for trade integration,” he added. “I don’t want to create any false expectations . . . it’s the first step on a long road which Latin America must travel.”
Initially a bilateral project, the initiative would be offered to other nations in Latin America. “It is Argentina and Brazil inviting the rest of the region,” the Argentine minister said.
A currency union that covered all of Latin America would represent about 5 per cent of global GDP, the FT estimates. The world’s largest currency union, the euro, encompasses about 14 per cent of global GDP when measured in dollar terms.
Other currency blocs include the CFA franc which is used by some African countries and pegged to the euro, and the East Caribbean dollar. However these encompass a much smaller slice of global economic output.
The project is likely to take many years to come to fruition; Massa noted that it took Europe 35 years to create the euro.
An official announcement is expected during Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s visit to Argentina that starts on Sunday night, the veteran leftist’s first foreign trip since taking power on January 1.
Brazil and Argentina have discussed a common currency in the past few years but talks foundered on the opposition of Brazil’s central bank to the idea, one official close to the discussions said. Now that the two countries are both governed by leftwing leaders, there is greater political backing.
A Brazilian finance ministry spokesman said he did not have information about a working group on a common currency. He noted that finance minister Fernando Haddad had co-authored an article
last year, before he took his current job, proposing a south American digital common currency.
Trade is flourishing between Brazil and Argentina, reaching $26.4bn in the first 11 months of last year, up nearly 21 per cent on the same period in 2021. The two nations are the driving force behind the Mercosur regional trade bloc, which includes Paraguay and Uruguay.
The attractions of a new common currency are most obvious for Argentina, where annual inflation is approaching 100 per cent as the central bank prints money to fund spending. During President Alberto Fernández’s first three years in office, the amount of money in public circulation has quadrupled, according to central bank data, and the largest denomination peso bill is worth less than $3 on the widely used parallel exchange rate.
However, there will be concern in Brazil about the idea of hitching Latin America’s biggest economy to that of its perennially volatile neighbour. Argentina has been largely cut off from international debt markets since its 2020 default and still owes more than $40bn to the IMF from a 2018 bailout.
Lula will stay in Argentina for a summit on Tuesday of the 33-nation Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which will bring together the region’s new crop of leftwing leaders for the first time since a wave of elections last year reversed a rightwing trend.
Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro was likely to attend, officials said, along with Chile’s Gabriel Boric and other more controversial figures such as Venezuela’s revolutionary socialist president Nicolás Maduro and Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel. Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador generally shuns overseas travel and is not scheduled to participate. Protests against Maduro’s attendance are expected in Buenos Aires on Sunday.
Above all, he told the Financial Times, the region needed to discuss what sort of economic development it wanted at a time when the world was hungry for Latin America’s food, oil and minerals.
“Is the region going to supply this in a way which turns its economy [solely] into a raw material producer or is it going to supply it in a way which creates social justice [by adding value]?,” he said.
Alfredo Serrano, a Spanish economist who runs the Celag regional political think-tank in Buenos Aires, said the summit would discuss how to strengthen regional value chains to take advantage of regional opportunities, as well as making progress on a currency union.
“The monetary and foreign exchange mechanisms are crucial,” he said. “There are possibilities today in Latin America, given its strong economies, to find instruments which substitute dependence on the dollar. That will be a very important step forward.”
Manuel Canelas, a political scientist and former Bolivian government minister, said that CELAC, founded in 2010 to help Latin American and Caribbean governments co-ordinate policy without the US or Canada, was the only such pan-regional integration body which had survived over the past decade as others fell by the wayside.
However, Latin America’s leftist presidents now face more difficult global economic conditions, trickier domestic politics with many coalition governments, and less enthusiasm from citizens for regional integration.
“Because of this, all the steps towards integration will certainly be more cautious . . . and will have to be focused directly on delivering results and showing why they are useful”, he cautioned.
Additional reporting by Bryan Harris in São Paulo, The Financial Times Limited 2023.
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